I’m a sucker for Cross Overs. Whether it’s DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths or Scooby Doo’s Laff-A-Lympics, I just can’t get enough of the conceit of combined universes.

I’ve bounced ideas around before about how this could work in board games, but never in a real serious way. There are already a couple Easter eggs in existing games that have done this in really cool ways. Nightmist from Sentinels of the Multiverse, for example, is the daughter of a character from Arkham Horror. Or in Alan R. Moon’s Airlines of Europe, each of the airlines is named after a famous board game company. It might just be me, but when I see stuff like that I go nuts.

Last month, when I participated in the Indie Board Game Showcase, I got the chance to get a good look at a game from a friend of mine Don Mitchell. Where I’m developing a Croquet Blood Sport Board Game, he was developing a Tennis with Wizards Card Game. AlakaSLAM. (Currently on it’s last week of it’s already successful Kickstarter)

During the showcase we kinda joked, that our games are so similar in theme, they probably exist in the same universe. That’s when the gears in my head started spinning, and a week later I approached Don with a crazy idea: a character swap.

The premise is fairly straight forward. I include a character from AlakaSLAM as a promo character in Killer Croquet, and, conversely, Don includes a promo character from Killer Croquet in AlakaSLAM.

AlakaSLAM is nearing the end of their Kickstarter, and my character Hank Spectre will be included provided they hit their $3,000 stretch goal.

The cross promotion is a decent tool to generate a few impressions, but it also helps link a few game together that have similar quality. I’m not just promoting his game for the reciprocal promoting back, I actually whole heatedly believe in AlakaSLAM, and I think anyone that would enjoy my game, would also enjoy his.

Not to mention the fact that even before this Hank Spectre has a rival named Bill Wizard, who owns a very large estate. An estate that has been known to host Croquet Tournaments as well as Wizarding Tennis exhibitions. But that’s another story for the Croquet News Network to cover at some point down the line.